The One Who Won't Be Abandoned - Chapter 27

“Maybe he was just picking something up?”

“Do you think I can’t tell the difference? No, it was definitely something else. But… Madam Judith said I should consult you about anything regarding the young master….”

“I’m busy. Get to the point.”

“Well, the thing is….”

Harmon hesitated again, his face turning red. After an awkward pause, he mimed an action with his hands in the air, as if grasping something and moving it up and down.

“You don’t know what this is?”

“What are you doing?”

“You know, that… uh, something men do alone….”

“What?”

“Oh, come on!”

Frustrated, Harmon ruffled his hair and lowered his voice even more.

“He was… pleasuring himself. You know, masturbating! Who does that in front of weird stuff like that? It has to be some kind of cult ritual!”

It took me a moment to process what Harmon had just said.

“Well, men… uh… it’s not unusual for them to, um… you know….”

“Not like this! No sane person does that while staring at weird rags and flintstones!”

For some reason, my mind immediately went to the rag doll and flintstone I had sent to Andre.

“…Was it just a piece of cloth, or was it a doll?”

“I don’t know. It looked like this….”

Harmon waved his arms vaguely, as if mimicking tentacles or something long and strange.

“It was creepy. There were weird long parts sticking out… but now that you mention it, I guess it could’ve been a doll. A creepy monster doll! That’s it!”

“…”

“Cultists worship demons or monsters, right? I thought about it all night. Maybe the… um… you know, that act is part of putting his energy into the doll, and the flintstone is for burning it later, as part of some kind of ritual.”

I was speechless at Harmon’s wild imagination.

“What do we do, Jeanne? I’m so scared, I can’t even go near the young master’s room anymore.”

“…”

“That’s why… could you ask him? Find out what kind of religion he’s into? Like, does it involve human sacrifices or… orgies? What if that’s part of the rituals? I’m terrified I might end up being a victim!”

“…Are you serious?”

“You know how strong the young master is! He could overpower me with one hand. I wouldn’t stand a chance….”

Harmon’s fear seemed entirely genuine. His wide eyes were filled with unshed tears, making him look pitiful enough to stir sympathy.

“Don’t worry,”

“Our young master isn’t like that. At least, not the one I know. Are we even talking about the same person?”

I patted Harmon’s shoulder, reassuring him, and told him I’d handle Andre’s needs today. Harmon immediately lit up, clearly relieved. He offered to take care of my cleaning duties in return and practically flew off down the hallway. Even as he ran off, his voice echoed loudly through the corridor, thanking me repeatedly.

“Thank you so much! You’re the best, Jeanne!”

* * *

Andre’s room was located on the third floor of D’Hel Castle. While one of the reception rooms I was in charge of was also on the third floor, meaning I often visited, it was my first time entering Andre’s room.

Knocking was essential before entering the room of an occupied owner. However, despite several consecutive knocks, there was no response from inside.

I turned to leave, hesitating only briefly before turning back toward Andre’s door.

A peculiar confidence came over me. I wondered if it would really be so wrong to just go in. Knowing Andre, he probably wouldn’t mind me entering uninvited or even be upset. On the contrary, I thought he might even be pleased. It was an audacious thought for a maid, but it genuinely felt true to me.

The door wasn’t locked.

Andre’s personal valet typically handled the upkeep of his room, so this was my first time stepping into it.

“Wow.”

The first thing that caught my eye upon entering was the sheer size of the room—it was at least ten times bigger than my own. The spaciousness of the room was invigorating, and despite being filled with various pieces of furniture, it never felt cramped due to its enormous size.

Sunlight poured into the room through a large window with an ornate frame, filling the space with warm light that made it feel cozy and inviting.

I momentarily clicked my tongue, thinking of Andre living in such an extravagant room while he practically moved into my gloomy, cramped quarters under the pretense of caring for me. My room didn’t even have a window, yet Andre spent almost the entire day by my side, supposedly looking after me.

His dedication to caregiving was relentless—so much so that it became challenging to shoo him away. He was insistent to the point of managing all my minor needs, even avoiding leaving me unless absolutely necessary.

At one point, he even attempted to clean the crust from my eyes when I had just woken up! Had I not sternly stopped him, he would have gone through with it, utterly unbothered.

“When did he prepare all this?”

I trailed my fingers over the frame of a winter landscape painting hanging right next to the door. The painting was housed in an expensive-looking, gilded frame.

“…Not a speck of dust.”

It seemed the cleaner, Harmon, was doing a decent job. The room was impeccably tidy and well-organized, leaving nothing to critique.

As I wandered around the room, marveling at the details, my eyes were drawn to a massive sword and shield hanging on one of the walls. The shield, large enough to cover a person, gleamed brilliantly as if freshly polished.

I stepped closer to the shield, which was hung slightly above my eye level, and looked up at it. The faintly curved surface was so reflective that it mirrored my outline.

The sword and scabbard hanging beside it were equally remarkable. Unlike the shield, which had only a vine pattern around its border, the scabbard was entirely covered in intricate designs. Even as someone accustomed to seeing the swords and shields of the Kaima knights, I had never seen anything like these before. Both the sword and shield were unusually large, seemingly custom-made for a powerful individual.

“Do bigger people need bigger weapons?”

Thinking about it, I recalled that one of the knights who was as large as Andre also wielded an equally oversized sword. It somehow felt satisfying, as though I had just confirmed Andre’s strength with my own eyes.

Feeling uplifted, I continued to explore the room until a sudden thought crossed my mind. I froze in place, letting out a soft gasp.

“Wait… did Harmon really clean this?”

I frowned, remembering how Harmon used to shudder at the mere idea of going near this room.

The room was spotless, almost suspiciously so. It felt as though a professional cleaner had just finished working on it—there wasn’t even a speck of dust or a single object out of place.

The bed was neatly made, the pillow perfectly fluffed without any creases or signs of use. The level of care bordered on compulsive perfectionism.

As my gaze slid over the bed, it landed on a small round table beside it. On the table sat a fabric doll and a flint stone that looked oddly familiar.

I immediately recognized them. The doll, made of an unusual grayish-purple cloth, was a rabbit I had painstakingly sewn with my own hands, sacrificing all ten fingers in the process. The flint stone beside it was something I had gifted Andre, telling him to remember me whenever he saw it.

Feeling a sense of warmth and nostalgia, I instinctively reached out to touch them.

“Don’t touch that.”

Startled, I whipped my head around toward the source of the voice. I thought the room was empty, but someone had just stopped me.

Standing there, fresh from the bathroom, was Andre. He was wearing nothing but a large towel wrapped around his lower half, water droplets still clinging to his skin.

As our eyes met, Andre raised a dry towel in his hand and draped it over his wet hair. A playful smile danced on his lips, his crescent-shaped eyes brimming with mischief and a strange allure.

My heart, which had been racing from the surprise, began pounding even harder as I took in his suggestive presence.

When I instinctively stepped back, Andre’s sharp eyes briefly flashed with dissatisfaction.

His body was like a work of art, muscles defined as though chiseled into place. Broad shoulders supported a pair of perfectly sculpted deltoid muscles, while his thick, sinewy arms flexed subtly as he dried his hair.

The sight of his chest and abs, moving fluidly with each motion, exuded an untamed masculinity that was almost overwhelming.

My eyes inadvertently trailed lower, stopping at his thighs, which were thick and powerful, like tree trunks. His calves, smooth yet muscular, looked equally sturdy.

“Gah!”

I gasped when a water droplet slipped down from his thigh, trailing all the way to his calf. The sight made my face flush with heat as an inexplicable feeling washed over me, as if I were the droplet, gliding down his taut muscles.

“Why?”

Andre tilted his head slightly, seemingly puzzled by my flustered state, and asked while drying his hair with a towel,

“Why’s your face red? Are you not fully recovered yet? Why did you struggle to come all the way up here? I was planning to come down.”

I couldn’t think straight with Andre’s bare body so close to me. No matter how much I tried to avert my gaze, my eyes stubbornly returned to his chest. In the end, I resorted to squeezing my eyes shut.

“Please, put some clothes on. I’m begging you.”

There was a brief silence following my desperate plea. Since my eyes were tightly shut, I couldn’t tell what expression Andre was making as he looked at me. Fortunately, when he finally responded, his voice was gentle and devoid of any irritation.

“…Alright. Wait just a moment.”

He placed a hand lightly on my shoulder and guided me to sit down on the bed behind me. Startled by the unexpected touch, I opened my eyes just in time to see Andre turning away and walking into what seemed to be a wardrobe.

Even in that fleeting moment, I couldn’t take my eyes off his broad, muscular back until he disappeared from view. Once he was gone, it took some time for me to calm the strange storm of emotions that had taken over my body.

“What on earth is wrong with me?”

No matter how starved I might be for male attention, I should have better standards than to drool over just anyone.

But Andre’s strong and impressive physique had momentarily stirred an irrational desire within me. Acknowledging and accepting this only made me feel worse. I felt like some kind of depraved woman obsessed with men, and the thought filled me with shame.

Caught between embarrassment, self-loathing, and guilt, I found myself clawing at the bedspread. The soft texture against my palm snapped me out of it. What was I doing, sitting on the bed of someone I served?

Realizing how absurd the situation was, I hastily jumped to my feet.

Yet as I stood there awkwardly, the same thought as earlier crossed my mind: Maybe it’s okay.

After all, Andre himself had seated me here, in his very personal bed. That was as good as giving me permission to sit there, wasn’t it?

I knew that Andre saw me as his closest confidante. His actions made it clear that he trusted and relied on me immensely.

Even so…

The thought that followed made me laugh bitterly, a sense of emptiness and helplessness washing over me.

No matter how much Andre trusted and depended on me, at the end of the day, I was just a maid. No matter how endlessly generous Andre and the lord of the castle were to me, there were still boundaries I could never cross. And I had no intention of letting arrogance lead me to shatter the peace I’d worked so hard to build.

Just then, Andre reappeared, dressed casually. My gaze involuntarily swept over him, and my mind betrayed me by vividly recalling the sight of his bare body from earlier. His muscles seemed to outline themselves through the thin fabric, as if teasing me.

“Have you eaten?”

“…What? Sorry, what did you say?”

The moment I saw Andre, my mind was once again filled with inappropriate thoughts. I was hopeless today.

“Food. Have you eaten?”

“I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t… Oh! I was supposed to bring your meal!”

Suddenly, I remembered that I had volunteered to attend to Andre in Harmon’s place today. Realizing I hadn’t even thought to bring him his meal, I clicked my tongue in frustration at my own carelessness.

It was an understandable oversight since I wasn’t a maid who typically served meals, but the idea of leaving Andre hungry made me anxious. Panicking, I hurriedly said,

“I’m so sorry. I’ll go get it right now!”

As I hurried toward the door, Andre grabbed my arm gently, stopping me.

“There’s no need to bother with that. Just sit down.”

“What?”

“If the bed’s uncomfortable, sit on the sofa.”

“I can’t do that. I’m here to work.”

“Work?”

“My job is to attend to you today, Andre.”

Something about my words seemed to rub Andre the wrong way. His brow furrowed, and his displeasure was unmistakable.

“W-why?”

I tried to sound firm, but the strange tension emanating from Andre made me stammer.

“I’m just filling in for Harmon today. Starting tomorrow, Harmon will take over again. Please bear with me, even if it’s uncomfortable for you.”

“Harmon?”

“Yes, your personal valet.”

“Oh… that guy who spies on me without shame.”

Though Andre smiled, the icy look in his eyes made it clear he wasn’t amused.

“That valet said something to you, didn’t he? His name is Harmon, right? Are you two close?”

“He’s a good person, so yes, we get along well.”

It seemed Andre was aware that Harmon had been sneaking peeks at him. Since the topic had come up, I decided to ask about Harmon’s request.

“Um, there’s something I’m curious about. Do you, by any chance, follow a religion from Siamos…?”

Before I could finish, Andre placed his hands lightly on my shoulders and guided me toward the sofa.

“Sit.”